Pardi-yi Asrār: Esoteric Veil of Mystery in Persian Literature

Veil provides us with contradictory modes of intuition, perception or cognition. On the one hand, it functions as a threshold, an opening, a window or a passageway, bridging the phenomenal world to the noumenal, the visible to the invisible, and the virtual to the real. On the other hand, it functions either as a wall, totally intercepting one’s passage to the other levels of consciousness or reality or it partially reduces one’s perception as through a transparent veil. It provides us with an unlimited space of imagination. While seeing a naked object gives it a frame and curbs the imagination, veiling grants the imagination a free rein, readily blurring the boundary between reality and illusion. The reality lying behind the veil is often either sexual or divine. While the veil interposes a physical distance, it also holds promise of a tempting intimacy. A glimpse of the object which should remain veiled can destroy or at least distract the beholder, as the phrase “to go within the veil” in Persian figuratively means to die. On the other hand, the look can also destroy, unchaste or desecrate the object which is unveiled. Furthermore, due to its function as a form of representation, providing a space of imagination, the veil has often been regarded as a metaphor for text, bridging the erotic or mystical experience to the aesthetic one. For instance, Rūmi explicitly draws upon the metaphor of textual veil to convey his divine-aesthetic meaning. Rather than functioning as merely descriptive or figurative topoi—as ornaments employed for stylistic effect—metaphors of the veil are indeed constitutive of meaning, participating in the configuration of a Weltanschauung or a whole system of thought. The veil is among the recurrent key metaphors in Persian Sufi literature which was adopted for conceptualization of the divine reality and for conveying the ineffability of esoteric experience. The present study attempts to analyses some of the meanings and functions of the veil in Persian Sufi literature.